


Frost at Midnight

by sans_patronymic



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Banter, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, First Kiss, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Poorly Trained Pets, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-08-23 08:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16615613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: On a cold night at Baker Street, Holmes and Watson share a blanket while Holmes recalls his first kiss.





	Frost at Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ColebaltBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColebaltBlue/gifts).



_The night is an impossibly cold one. No snow, but with a wind that reaches through overcoats and windowpanes. Cold enough that Baker Street is silent. All the houses along it are bundled up with their heaviest drapes pulled tight, their tenants wrapping themselves in wool shawls and hugging hot water bottles._

_In 221B, Mrs. Hudson sends everyone to bed early with a demitasse of hot water and lemon. Never mind that it is scarcely nine o’clock: to bed, with a warm drink and a good book. They could use a full night’s rest for once._

_Only two denizens do not obey her edict. With the rest of the house asleep, they sprawl shamelessly before the sitting room fireplace, a shivering pile of quilts and kisses, pillows and sighs. The fire in the grate is dying down, but neither of them can find it in himself to get up and tend to it._

_“Keep your toes off me,” Watson complains, kicking a leg in protest, “they’re like ice!”_

_“I know,” says Holmes, “that’s precisely why I’m putting them on you, my little steam heater.”_

_“I told you we’d regret putting the eiderdown_ under _us.”_

_Holmes shakes his head. With his nose pressed to Watson’s neck, he can breathe in the rich, warm scent of him. He kisses him there once, twice._

_“I don’t regret it. I feather my nest as I please. And you must admit, it’s far more agreeable this way.”_

_“There is something rather romantic about it. A lover’s tryst upon the hearth rug…”_

_Watson can feel Holmes’s laugh more than he hears it. Long, thin arms pull him into an embrace._

_“I meant physical comfort. But yes, it is romantic. Always reminds me of my first kiss.”_

_“Your first kiss?”_

_“You look a little bewildered,” says Holmes._

_“You’ve such a talent for it, I’ve never considered that you had a first. I suppose it was with a farm girl who taught you everything you know?”_

_“My dear, that sounds much more like_ your _first kiss than mine. I was a chaste and innocent youth.”_

_“The devil you were.”_

_“Such cheekiness! One should think you didn’t want to hear about it.”_

_“You arouse my curiosity.” By the tone in Watson’s voice, it is more than curiosity. “Go on.”_

_“Very well,” says Holmes. “You’ve heard me talk of Victor Trevor and the_ Gloria Scott  _affair? I was, perhaps, a little bit vague with regards to the relationship between Trevor and myself.”_

_“Were you?”_

_“Yes. You see…_

I said he was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college, and that much is true. Following the incident with his dog and my ankle, Trevor had taken to stopping by to see how I was getting on. This was partly driven, I suppose, by guilt, and partly to prove to me—and the College—that his pup was no more a beast than his owner was a Turk. By the time my ankle had healed, the three of us became quite tidy friends and Trevor kept up his habit of visiting me, so much so that rarer was the day he  _wasn’t_  in my rooms at one point or another.

Trevor’s attentions overwhelmed and intoxicated me. I have always been a particularly friendless fellow, even as a boy. I was amiable enough, but never had anyone with whom to share thoughts and dreams and stories. Trevor was my first in several respects. I took to his friendship like a duck to water.

_“To his ‘friendship’, eh? What about to the rest of him?”_

_“Hush,” says Holmes, “Don’t interrupt! By ‘friendship’ I do mean friendship. I was quite guileless in those days; I hadn’t the faintest notions of anything crude or amative.”_

_Watson snorts. Beneath the quilt, Holmes gives him a pinch. Watson still does not believe Holmes was ever so virtuous, but he says nothing. It was quite a pinch._

_“May I continue?”_

_“Please.”_

This is all to say that I had grown quite fond of Trevor and he seemed equally fond of me. It never occurred to me to wonder why or to what end. That lesson came at the end of the term. I had spent the day as I spent most days then, avoiding my studies in favor of some quaint little problem of my own. When, at last, I heard a knock, I knew it could only be Trevor. I opened the door and in bounded the bull terrier, followed by his master, who was wrestling with a tray positively overflowing with dishes.

“No need to go down to supper tonight,” said Trevor, looking very keen-eyed and pleased with himself, “Mrs. Blankenship is in the kitchen tonight; I’ve charmed her out of a few sandwiches and pies. We’ll have a picnic here on the rug! How does that sound?”

“Excellent!” I cried, pushing aside a few odds and ends on top of my writing desk. “Only set it here, where the dog can’t reach.”

“Don’t worry, Homer, there’ll be scraps for you, later.”

Homer did not seem to have much confidence in this statement. While Trevor and I set about making ourselves comfortable, the poor creature whined and circled the desk. If he had had it in him to teach himself how to climb, by Jove, I think he should have. And all for a lot of soggy-crusted pies and dry roast beef.

“You’ve been at the library, I see.” I said, noting the shine on his coat sleeve and the half-crazed look of one who has spent too many hours alone in the stacks.

“Correct as ever, my good man—I’ve been there since breakfast. I swear, if I see one more equation, I’ll go off my nut.” Trevor deposited himself in the window seat with a grunt and began loosening his tie. “You don’t mind, do you? I’m feeling strangled. Pass me one of those sandwiches, there’s a fellow. Oh! I have something for you. No, get back, Homer! It’s not for  _you_.”

He reached into his jacket and produced a large, flat-sided cigar.

“Indian. For your ash experiment,” he said. 

“Oh, Victor, you are a marvel!” exclaimed I, and snatched the cigar from his grasp with such enthusiasm that my friend was compelled to laugh. “Did it put you out much?”

“Not at all. The dad sent me a box of ‘em to celebrate the end of term. Let me know if another would be twice as helpful.”

“No, no, this will do nicely. Thank you.”

I was touched that Trevor would encourage my interest in cataloging tobacco ash. I had no idea then, nor, certainly, did anyone else, how vital my monograph on such work would ultimately become. It was, at the time, little more than a schoolboy’s hobby, and I had developed a frightful habit of picking up stray cigarette-ends of curious origin off the street and pocketing them for later study. Trevor caught me at it once, and though he too failed to see much use in such a venture, he claimed to find it fascinating from a ‘purely scientific sort of view’. He was a terrible liar, but I was flattered he should lie for my sake _._

“Say, Holmes?” Trevor asked around a mouthful, “What are your plans for the long holiday?”

“I’m afraid that’s rather up to old man Muller now.” 

“Does he still mean to fail you?” 

“More than ever it seems. I was hoping to remain here between terms, only the College Dean says if I haven’t got  _all_  passing marks by the end of term, they’re going to send me up.”

I heaved a sigh that I hoped conveyed my lamentable condition. 

“You know, you could try  _attending_  tutorial once or twice. Possibly even  _reading_  the books. I’ve found that does wonders for me.”

“Oh no, don’t you start, too.”

“You’ll have to put the work in sooner or later! You can’t expect to get on forever just by being clever.”

“Watch me.”

“Come on, Holmes, be serious.”

“I am serious! The devil take Muller and his ‘laws of population growth’ and his ‘rotational symmetry’! What is it to me? What possible use could I have for it?”

“Well… if you won’t do it for yourself, think of me, won’t you? Whatever shall I do without you?” There was such an earnestness in his voice as he asked that I could hardly think how to answer him. He simply smiled and added with a laugh, “Are you finished eating? I am. Come on, Homer, now it’s your turn!”

Trevor moved the tray to the floor where Homer wasted no time in snapping up the remains of our supper. At least Mrs. Blankenship had one admirer among us. Meanwhile, Trevor , as had become our custom, took all the cushions from around the room and made a great divan on the floor. He stretched himself out amongst the cushions, casually, looking rather like Endymion on Mount Latmus. To see him like that, I understood how such a creature enchanted the moon herself; I too wished he could stay lying there always, deathless and ageless.

Trevor’s voice cut in: “Have you anything to drink?”

“Er? I have some sherry, I think.”

I was not, in those days, a very good host, nor even a passable one. After a bit of rummaging, I did manage to produce the bottle of sherry, one glass, and a chemical beaker lined with a thin film of something which I was fairly sure was Citric acid. I handed Trevor the glass. 

“This might have gone off; I don’t remember when I opened it.”

Trevor took a sip. His face did an unpleasant bit of gymnastics. 

“Yes, I think it has...”

I felt compelled to join him and took a drink of my own portion. Whatever was wrong with it, the Citric acid didn’t help. I downed the rest of it in one, vile gulp.

“Eugh—don’t finish it, man!”

“Waste not, want not.”

“Revolting,” he declared with a grin. “Now, sit down, before you do something else ridiculous.”

Obediently, I deposited myself on the sea of cushions. We were near enough to one another that our shoulders touched. Nothing more than that, but the initial contact, the transition from Not Touching to Touching always flustered me greatly. Something about the nearness of him, the possibility of being nearer, still, absolutely blanked my mind, better than any drug I’ve ever known. There I’d sit, stupefied, fiddling with my shirt cuffs, hardly able to put two words together. For his part, Trevor either never noticed or was too polite to comment. Looking back now, I am inclined to believe it was the latter. 

“Shall we read?” asked he. 

I nodded. 

“Very well. What’ll it be today, hm? Ah, I see you’ve kept Coleridge filed away right where I left ‘im.”

Trevor reached a hand beneath a chair and produced a dusty volume of verse. It could hardly have been there for more than a week, but I’m afraid my housekeeper at the time was not as charitable a soul as Mrs. Hudson; she’d sworn off my rooms altogether after the first minor incident. Settling back against the cushions, Trevor gave the cover a bit of a brush before opening the volume and finding where we had left off.

How I revered the time we spent that way. We would drape ourselves across the cushions, quite as you and I are now—though not, of course, in the altogether—and take turns reading from whatever tome Trevor had chosen. This was another custom of ours, you see, reading together. You are not the only one, my dear, to be disappointed by my lack of literary knowledge. During his first visit, Trevor was aghast to discover, when he made some passing reference to  _Our Mutual Friend_ , that not only had I never read it, I had never read _anything_ by Dickens whatsoever. He took it upon himself to correct this pedagogical wrong by forcibly reading to me what he considered the greatest of the Great Works and several other books besides. Any passably clever thing I have to say on the subject of literature, I owe entirely to him.

He was a nervous reader, apt to stutter and skip over words, but all the same I quite liked to lie there, smoking and listening to him read. Homer no doubt approved as well, as he’d curl up alongside us. We would stay that way for hours. That’s precisely how it was that afternoon: Trevor, the dog, Coleridge and myself, in a friendly little pile.

“Say, Holmes?” asked Trevor, after a time. “You don’t really mean to let Muller fail you, do you?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, annoyed to return to the subject.

“Perhaps I could help. I know all Muller’s tricks. We could do your readings here, together…”

“Trevor, I—“

“Let’s have a bet, how’s that? If you pass, you may come down to Donnithorpe with me for the long vacation. The dad won’t mind and you’d enjoy it, I know you would.”

“But,” I pointed out, “if I passed, I wouldn’t  _need_  someplace to stay for the long vacation. I could stay here—that’s the rub. What if I fail and get the boot?”

“You’ll come to Donnithrope anyway, only I’ll make you go shooting and fishing with me. I’ll keep you outdoors so long, you’ll forget you ever saw a microscope.”

We both laughed at the very thought, a raucous, contagious laugh that startled poor Homer and set him barking. I protested Trevor could never make a country squire out of me. Trevor insisted he could. We argued and tousled, tousled and argued, laughing all the while. By the end of it, I was flat on my back upon the hearth rug, Trevor pinning me down with a hand on either shoulder. I shall never forget the look on his face.

“Trevor,” I said, half-realizing what it was that I saw in his expression, “it really  _does_  matter to you if I’m sent up.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His grip upon my shoulders tightened. For a moment we remained transfixed, gazing at one another. When Trevor’s answer finally came, it was powerful—explosive. A kiss, innocent enough, I suppose, as kisses go, but illuminating. The final bit of data, which converts a mystery to a simple narrative. It was as though a switch had been thrown and my whole body lit up. I realized I was not only  _fond_  of Trevor, I _wanted_ him, terribly, desperately.

But it was only a kiss and nothing more. As soon as our lips parted, Trevor was on his feet, gathering up his jacket and tie, and whistling for Homer. I called his name and he paused in the doorway without turning to face me.

“Will you… will you come again tomorrow?” I asked.

He turned and smiled at me. 

“Of course,” said Trevor and, shooing the dog out before him, he left.

_For a while after the story has finished, there is quiet. Ashes settling in the fireplace. Wind rattling the windows in their frames. Skin sliding against skin. Hearts keeping time in their chests._

_“Were you sorry when Trevor left England?”_

_Holmes smiles. It seems to him in such moments that Watson has much more talent for observation than he lets on.  In the hall, the clock chimes out the hour._

_“Let it suffice to say that if he had asked, I should have followed him anywhere.”_

_“Hmm. I understand that. Did that professor fail you in the end?”_

_“No, I passed. Not that it much mattered—I never went back.”_

_“Back where? To University?” asks Watson, aghast as only a man with an advanced degree can be at such a thought. “Never?”_

_“There didn’t seem much point to it, to me. I’m afraid the faculty felt the same way about trying to instruct me. What’s more, I didn’t care to walk those so-called hallowed halls without Trevor about. Too morbid.”_

_“But you were working in the chemical laboratory when we met. You mean to tell me you weren’t a student then?”_

_“My dear boy, anyone may be anyplace if he simply acts as though he belongs there. I was using the hospital laboratory then because I hadn’t enough space or equipment in my rooms at Montague street for my work.”_

_“Great Scott, you are incorrigible!”_

_“To the last, my darling, to the last,” says Holmes, wearing the Devil’s grin, “Now you shall have to tell me all about your farm girl.”_

_“Not tonight, I won’t. I’m putting us both to bed before we freeze solid.”_

_Watson’s mustache tickles against Holmes’s neck. Any protests he could make are lost among the kisses._ _Holmes's_ _bed is too small for two men, but tonight, as the frost weaves lacework across the windowpanes, they’re grateful for the closeness._


End file.
